…only holds up as long as we are talking about avatars doing in-game action against other avatars, with no deeper emotion involved between the players behind the avatars.

Let’s take this a step further. What if the GAME is actually designed to cause this type of competition? American football is a contact physical sport and injuries happen, because players are hitting each other as hard as they can. If it makes the other guy go down, that’s sad, but it’s part of the game. Competitors always go for absolute victory. Going for a complete win, where the enemy won’t ever even come back to challenge you again, means using everything you have. It’s a way of looking at things so foreign and strange to people like Tobold, that they call it evil.

Evil is something different I think. Like purifying comments to maintain a particular image and silence voices of dissent.

But hey, that’s just me.

Edit: Some fun blog responses so far (I’ll try to link more as the day goes on, but meh, Friday, no promises).

I would be remiss in my duties as absentee, virtual non-existent blogger if I didn’t at least point you in the direction of this. Goon leader, and CSM chairman shared the tears of a victim and showed others an easy target. Of course, bleeding hearts came into the game at the “revelation” of said QQ’er being “suicidal”. Mittani’s first response was better than his apology. He didn’t cross any line, he pointed out a person who put their real life situation into the game. The victim shared it, and initiated the transaction of alleged personal information. It’s the equivalent of telling the disinterested kid behind the counter at Starbuck’s your life is hard and don’t want to go on anymore. They don’t give a shit, and will bitch about you to their co-workers later on.

Whatever, it’s all mostly done and the next story is already on the way for people to get riled up about. So, I’ll juse end this blurb with the following little thoughts:

Fellow internet gamers can be friends, but only after a long period of time of shared interaction.

I’d be sad if one of them committed suicide, may even go to a funeral (level of friendship correlating to distance traveled)

Everyone else is as much of a stranger as the dude who walks by me in Target.

If they committed suicide, I’d hear the news and think the situation is too bad, but I honestly wouldn’t care.

None of us have to care about anyone, and we especially don’t need to be concerned over the potential reactions of someone over activities in a video game. Grow up, be an adult, take responsibility.

Something about PI just makes me feel like an eater of worlds. I show up, the soulless immortal, living out of clone #58, harvest your home until it’s an empty husk of it’s former self, and sell the results to the highest bidder.

I think you can do that yourself. More then that, you already did before, on multiple occasions. Peter here is a perfect example of a strict follower of an Inner Ape. And for an ape domination doesn’t have to be motivated by something else, then by the need for domination itself. Evolution made it clear, that the most dominant ape gets all the females, and his offspring have much greater chance to be born. Games like EVE warp this instincts to more complex behavioral patterns, but the goal – the goal never changes.

“Also, I don’t understand why would anyone throw a keyboard out of the window because he lost a ship.”

The very same reason – he had been pushed down the domination chain. It’s unpleasant, and, depending of self-esteem, can be quite painful. And that, of course, come before any reason can kick in. Therefore, keyboards and windows meet more often, then it’s rational.

…SWTOR showed that the fourth pillar wasn’t just an overused catchphrase…

No, no it hasn’t. SW:tOR has done nothing even close to that. Not for MMOs. What SW:tOR HAS done is show that they can make multiple single player games, that fluff each other up with the detritus content of a shared mud-puddle and paint on a veneer of completely unnecessary and mostly ignored multiplayer. Syp’s overall point may have some (some) merit, but a lot of his more salient points are questionable. Highlighting EQ2’s “interactive” dialog system is laughable. Want to know how it works? Keep clicking the top response to get the quest and the “right” outcome. Moving beyond the specifics of his post, I see the thrust of the entire post as misplaced. It starts with the base assumption that questing is the modus operandi of the genre, and the primary form of player interaction of the world, when the truth is far from it. The very fact that I read a post about the refinement level of this horrible paradigm hurts the core of my very essence.

Death to all quest-givers

If there was one thing I could erase from the history of virtual world and MMO history, it would be the dungeon finder. However, if there were TWO things I could erase, the second would be the concept of quest hubs. For so many reasons, they don’t make sense. Hell, even the terminology baffles the mind. A quest is grand endeavor, something set upon by an entity/organization to achieve some end result. Knights quest for the Holy Grail. Philosophy quests after meaning and understanding. You can quest for the salvation of a people. Link can quest to save his princess (or a flute/mask/whatever). You can’t quest the pests out of NPC-351’s farmlands. You especially can’t walk up a village and have 5-10 people all trying to give you a quest. At least have the decency to call them “tasks”.

Additionally, the level of disbelief we’ve been conditioned to have at just seeing a “hub” is beyond me. Why do we believe and even accept that walking up to a central location of gathering will suddenly have a lot of problems that hasn’t bee solved by others, or even parceled out to the other people around us. If you want story to make sense, it has to make sense in the world it is in. When I walk up to get a “quest” from an NPC, why do we never hear, “Thanks for asking, but the guy you just saw walking away already took care of it for me.”? Hell, why is the object I’m looking for always there when I get a task from something.

Getting “story” to matter

Trying to get a story to matter in an MMO is like trying to teach a two-year old to grasp the concept of time. You may get some of the little details across, but on the whole, there won’t be a lasting effect. Until games become dynamic enough to allow for player actions to have impactful (that means lasting) results on the world and the environment (that’s the “E” in PvE btw), AND have the environment react back to the players, stories will be the candy coating to hide the bitter pill of grind. The only stories that really matter in an MMO are the ones we make as players. The only stories that last are the ones I made on my own with other people.

I don’t appreciate facade, especially when I’m told the facade is the reality.

I’m going to admit something to myself (and you by consequence): Historically, I have been incredibly bad at the game of EVE. That is to say, that I’ve always been almost completely broke, never having any amount of savings, and not having a good kill record. Point of fact, right now, I believe I have about 10 million isk in my bank account. There are reasons for all of this of course, and I like to call them lessons. In EVE, being bad is only a temporary set-back if you learn from it, and I’ve had a lot of lessons in being “bad”, and I think it all boils down to a problem of ambition.

When I first started playing EVE, it was with a mix of many different dreams. There was so much to do, that it all sounded like amazing fun, and I wanted to do all of it. I wanted to do everything. Be the lone-wolf space pirate scourging any care-bear I find. The massive carrier pilot flying with impunity, ready to destroy anyone foolish enough to challenge me. A deep space explorer, finding wormholes and ancient technology. I wanted to build a base and own a corner of the universe with friends to start an empire. Or to fly a fighter ship and enjoy thrilling dogfights in massive air battles for my nation. So much to do!

So of course, I immediately headed for low-sec space. I attacked some people, died a lot. All while watching my sec status quickly plummet to under -5. By the time I started to actually learn what the game was about, and how foolish my first decision had been, shit had gone south. As I joined corporations, I became vividly aware of the realities of sec-status in Empire space. The number of ships I lost to Concord gate-ships easily numbers in the dozens (mostly Caracals). I keenly recall being in Blue Federation, joining a fleet and expressing concern that my sec-status will get me wrecked as I traveled to the 0.9 security system they had designated. I was assured of my safety.

That did not end well.

Consequently, a lot of my time in EVE has been practice in frustration, albeit, good frustration. The time has contained the feeling that persists when trying to solve a problem you KNOW there is a solution to, if you could just work at it a bit longer. A knot or logic problem that you could solve if you just had a little more time… But I get distracted, and go off to pursue another avenue of fun, and the next time, I landed in Null-sec, with a group of players that are good people, but probably not the right fit for my play-schedule. It was a corporation in the Romanian Legion, and I actually learned a lot in my time there. Of jump bridges, jump clones, and star maps.

To stop this from winding further into an abbreviated history of my time in EVE, I’ll summarize the sentiment with this: I never approached EVE with a concrete plan. I bounced around like a suger-high three-year old in shiny object factory. This last month of play for me has been very directed and intentional (for lack of a better word). I’m still a bit broke, but it’s from purchasing investments as opposed to loses. My plans going forward are to place myself on what is a more traditional evolutionary play-track for the game, perhaps 29 million skill-points later than usual. Once I feel I have a solid handle and a happy cushion in my wallet, I’ll see about moving onto other endeavors.

This is one of the great things about EVE, no matter where you may be, you can still achieve in the game, because all your goals and markers are of your own making. Success is defined by the player.